Volkswagen Will Finalise 2017 World Rally Car Design

Volkswagen will be finalising the specification of new 2017 Polo R by the end of this month. With the new regulations coming into effect from 2017 season, German car maker has just concluded its latest round of tests with the new car. Technical director Francois-Xavier Demaison said, the 2017 car is in final development phase.

Demaison said,”Everything has to be with the FIA for homologation for November 1. After that, we cannot change anything – the only thing that will change is if the FIA is not happy with something. The final validation process is the end of this month, the specification will be frozen at the start of September then we start building nine chassis – three for Monte, three for Sweden and three spares – at the start of December.“

At present Volkswagen is testing chassis 35 and 36, while the 37th Polo R WRC which is yet to be build, will be Sebastien Ogier’s car for next seasons opening rally, that is Rally Monte-Carlo. The teams preparations for the 2017 season has been affected by testing regulations, which only allows 42 days of testing, because the car is an evolution of current WRC model and not a completely new machine.

Demaison further said,”This is the reason why we are doing all of this year’s pre-event tests with the 2017 car. For sure, this penalises us this year – we saw that a little bit in Poland. All the time, the drivers are coming to me and saying I want to test the 2016 car, but I say to them: ‘No, I am a bastard and you know it!’. I have to tell them this otherwise it will be so much more difficult for us next year. It’s more important for us to focus on 2017. This year there aren’t so many runners and at the moment what we have is just about enough, but next year it’s going to be more [competitive] and we have to be ready.“

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